Policy-Makers

There is something fundamentally flawed with a nation composed primarily of politicians whose own lives will not be endangered by changes in policy.

Men, making decisions on reproductive rights, whose own bodies will never experience the rigors of pregnancy. The wealthy one-percenters, making decisions about minimum wage, with no understanding of what it means to live on less than that every day. Straight people deciding who does or doesn’t get to visit their loved ones in the hospital. Cisgendered folks deciding about trans health care coverage.

I don’t know what the solution is — it also seems wrong to require that you have some skin in the game in order to advocate policy changes. I’m not disabled, but as an elected official in our strategic planning meeting on Saturday, I was talking about whether we could add a low-sensory morning at the library, to make space for those who would find it helpful. Allies are useful, I think and hope.

But I watch West Wing, and they lose a big fight about domestic violence funding, or tax breaks for college tuition, and the rich white men in the room are idealists, they’re disappointed at the loss, but then they shrug and move onto the next thing. They don’t go home and spend the next few nights trying to hold themselves together, shaking and scared about what’s coming round the bend, and how it will directly impact their daily lives.